A blog about genealogy and thoughts about the various roots and branches of my family tree as well as the times in which my ancestors lived.Included are the West, White,and McFarland families.WARNING:DO NOT TAKE ALL OF MY FAMILY RECORDS AS GOSPEL. ALWAYS CONFIRM YOUR OWN RESEARCH!

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Thursday, December 13, 2012

MEETING MY WHITE FAMILY COUSINS

I've written before about contacts I've made with relatives through this blog.The latest instance of this happened about a week ago. I've done posts aboutmy Mom's parents and how after their divorce there had been no contact withmy grandfather Edward F White Sr or his family. We had no pictures at all of any of them because either my Mom or Grandmother Agnes threw out any pictures at some point after the divorce. Acts of genealogical kindness fromMichelle Robilliard and Pam Hatton I was able to find where my grandfatherwas buried and contact one of my uncles by his second marriage.

Then about two weeks ago I received an email with this photo of my greatgrandmother Pauline Offinger, Edward's mother.

The sender is my second cousin, a descendant of my grandfather's older brother.I sent him my phone number and a day later we had a great phone conversationand exchanged information. He mentioned I should talk with his father, and the next day I did. it was another great talk, and we made plans to meet for lunch at the Chinese restaurant down the street from my apartment.

So today I met my first cousin once removed for the first time.(I haven't usedeither cousins' names for privacy reasons). I was a bit nervous about it buthe is a nice guy and east to talk with. He brought some family pictures and in one I noticed a family resemblance between one of my great granduncles and my Mom and her brother. There was no pictures of my grandfather, though,because apparently he didn't keep in touch very often with the rest of the family either. We both agreed that it was too bad the division between ourtwo sides of the family had gone on for so long, and I hope to meet more of my white family relatives soon.

And we might never have met if I hadn't written those posts about mygrandfather here in this blog!